Tag: Nick Gibb

The article by Nick Gibb, published as a press release by the Department for Education, in the TES on 11 November 2011.

Rising life expectancy is a miracle of the modern age. The average 60-year-old in this country is now living 10 years longer than 30 years ago. And people over the age of 60 are staying healthy for longer too. Both advances are to be celebrated.

But these dramatic demographic and social changes, coupled with the turbulent economic times, present enormous challenges for the long-term provision of pensions. Across the world, countries are debating how best to support an ageing population.

The new offer on public sector pensions made by the government last week is a good one. A better accrual rate will mean that a teacher retiring on a salary of £37,800 will receive an inflation-proof pension of £25,200. And no one within a decade of retirement will see any difference at all. These proposals are fair for teachers, fair for the taxpayer and can be sustained for years to come.

The Government is offering a good deal for teachers. Following representations from teachers and their unions, we are now proposing a better offer than the original package. We are ready to continue open and honest discussions about what a reformed Teachers’ Pension Scheme might look like.

On the one hand, we must reward public service workers for their years of dedicated service. Teachers and lecturers are fundamental to the strength of our nation and the Government is determined to ensure that the profession is recognised and valued through good pay, good pensions and good conditions. On the other hand, we cannot avoid the costs that arise from people living longer and the need to bring public finances under control if we are to get our economy back on track and deliver growth.

Doing nothing is not an option. Expenditure on teachers’ pensions is projected to double from the £5 billion a year it cost in the financial year 2005 to 2006 to almost £10 billion in 2015 to 2016, while the overall public sector pension bill has risen by a third in the last decade to £32 billion – and will continue to rise. This is simply not sustainable without eating into other areas of public spending such as schools and hospitals. Already, more than two-thirds of each teacher’s and lecturer’s pension is met by the taxpayer, rather than employer and employee contributions.

Former Labour cabinet minister Lord Hutton’s report earlier this year was clear that public service pensions need more fundamental, lasting changes. We’ve already had to make the hard decision to ask staff to contribute more to their pensions from next April, as part of the government’s plans to save £2.8 billion from public sector pensions between 2012 and 2015.

But the Hutton report found that we need a firmer grip on long-term costs to the taxpayer. That means changing the structure of the scheme, recognising increases in life expectancy through changes to the retirement age and spreading the costs more evenly between employees and employers.

We also need to make pensions fairer because, as Lord Hutton showed, lower-paid staff simply do not get as good a deal for their pension contributions as their higher-earning colleagues. Our starting point has always been that public sector pension schemes such as the Teachers’ Pension Scheme will remain among the best available.

The Government will honour teachers’ and lecturers’ existing accrued pensions in full. No one will lose a penny of the final salary pension they have already built up – and that final salary will be the final salary at the time of retirement. We will continue to provide a guaranteed amount in retirement, calculated as a proportion of staff’s salary and not dependent on whether the stock market goes up or down.

But it is important for teachers to understand how their pensions compare to other professions, including people in the private sector. Most private sector pensions in this country have already undergone big changes as businesses reassess their costs both now and in the future. A diminishing number of private-sector employees have a company pension. The number enjoying final salary or defined benefit schemes is even smaller. But public sector workers will still be sheltered from this uncertainty.

Employers will continue to make significant contributions to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, while the scheme strikes a fairer balance between high earners and others. We want to secure the very best outcome for teachers, which will ensure that the scheme continues to provide good quality pensions for teachers, but is fairer to the taxpayer and sustainable for the future. Our job over coming weeks is to work through the detail with the unions to get the decisions that are right for the profession.

The previous government made big changes to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme for new staff joining the profession from 2007, but Lord Hutton concluded that further reform is necessary. A good deal, agreed by all, will also mean that teachers continue to have one of the best retirement deals available to any profession.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, on 14 October 2011.

I’d like to start by thanking the experts I have worked with over the last five years, people like Ruth Miskin, Jennifer Chew, Sue Lloyd, Debbie Hepplewhite and others.

I am profoundly grateful to them and to all of you for teaching me and the children in your care so much about reading. Thanks to your patience, perseverance and passion at the most vital stage of a child’s education, hundreds of thousands of pupils have taken their first successful step in a lifetime of education.

The Government is determined to improve the teaching of reading in schools, and close the gap in attainment between the wealthiest and poorest pupils. We want to help all children, from all backgrounds, to become fluent and enthusiastic readers. Only once children have learnt to read, can they read to learn.

We already know how to tackle reading failure. High-quality international evidence has proved that systematic teaching of synthetic phonics is the best way to drive up standards in reading. Taught as part of a language rich curriculum, systematic synthetic phonics allows problems to be identified early and rectified before it is too late.

But although this country is one of the world’s highest spenders on education, too many children are failing. When teachers should be helping children to develop a lifetime’s love of reading, poor teaching strategies and practices are condemning too many children to a lifelong struggle.

The figures speak for themselves:

Only 73 per cent of all pupils on free school meals, and only two-thirds of boys eligible for free school meals, achieve the expected standard in reading at Key Stage 1;
More than 83,000 seven-year-olds achieved below Level 2 at Key Stage 1 this year;
One in five 11 year-olds leaves primary school still struggling with reading. Even worse, nine per cent of 11-year-old boys only achieve Level 2 or below at Key Stage 2;
Looking just at white boys eligible for free school meals, 60 per cent still aren’t reading properly at the age of 14;
And the reading ability of GCSE pupils in England is more than a year behind the standard of their peers in Shanghai, Korea and Finland, and at least six months behind those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia;
Overall, in the last nine years, England has fallen in PISA’s international tables from 7th to 25th in reading.
Early reading failure can affect a child’s education and attainment for the rest of their life. A recent report from the Centre for Social Justice pointed out that “significant literacy and numeracy problems are found in between 50 and 76 per cent of children who are permanently excluded from school”.

The report also identified literacy and numeracy problems in 60 per cent of children in special schools for those with behavioural problems, and in 50-60 per cent of the prison population. As the report’s author, Adele Eastman, concluded: “Many display challenging behaviour to hide the fact that they cannot read.”

And too many children grow to adulthood without ever learning this basic skill. Just this week, Army recruiting offices revealed that hundreds of would-be soldiers are being turned away because they cannot pass the most basic literacy and numeracy tests – that is, because they do not have a reading age of more than 11.

As a report by Civitas has stated, “Weak reading lies at the heart of both the educational apartheid between the advantaged and disadvantaged and stalled social mobility. The inability to read properly is the single greatest handicap to progress both in school and adult life”.

So for all these reasons, tackling reading failure is an urgent priority for this Government. We are completely focused on improving the teaching of reading in reception and Year 1 of primary school, with an emphasis on systematic synthetic phonics as the most effective means to achieve it.

And as well as mastering the basic skill of decoding, we want to encourage children to experience the joy of reading and develop a lifelong love of books.

One of my greatest pleasures when visiting a good school is listening to the children talking with real passion about their favourite books – the characters they have grown to love and the stories they have learnt.

But according to the OECD, the UK is ranked 47th out of 65 nations on the number of young people who read for enjoyment. Only six out of 10 teenagers regularly read for pleasure in this country, compared to 90 per cent in countries like Kazakhstan, Albania, China and Thailand. The difference in reading ability between pupils who never read for enjoyment, and those who read for just half an hour a day, is equivalent to a year’s schooling at age 15.

So we’re also working on policies to promote reading for pleasure. We’re currently considering ways to encourage children to read large numbers of books, and I will bring you up to date on our plans in due course.

We have already introduced a number of measures to ensure that more children learn the essential skill of decoding, and to equip teachers with the necessary skills, resources and training.

From next summer, our new Year 1 reading check will help teachers confirm whether individual pupils have grasped fundamental phonics decoding skills, and identify which children may need extra help.

The check will provide a national benchmark for phonic decoding, allowing schools to judge their performance on a local and national level, and encouraging them to set high expectations for what their pupils can achieve by the end of Year 1.

It will also help to give parents confidence that their child has learnt this crucial skill, reflecting research that found that 73 per cent of parents thought a year 1 reading check is a good idea.

Our pilot this year took place in around 300 schools across the country. Independent evaluation by a team from Sheffield Hallam University showed that three quarters of the schools felt that the check assessed phonic decoding ability accurately, while the vast majority of schools (over 90 per cent) thought that most aspects of the check’s content were suitable for their pupils.

Most importantly, almost half of the pilot schools (43 per cent) indicated that the check had helped them to identify pupils with phonic decoding issues of which they were not previously aware.

We’re now planning to roll out this short, simple check across the country next summer. The check will consist of a list of 40 words and non-words, 20 of each, which a child will read one-to-one with their own teacher.

The independent evaluation of the pilot showed that most children actively enjoyed the non-words, and thought they were “fun”.

Of course, it is important that children understand the difference between real words and non-words, and we are taking steps to address this issue: helping teachers to introduce non-words clearly, and carefully considering how non-words should be labelled or presented.

But I am very glad to see that our overall plans for the reading check have been welcomed by the Reading Reform Foundation (RRF), and that you believe that it will “ensure that all children have a good phonics foundation, and identify those pupils who need extra help”.

I hope that we can recruit all of the RRF’s members to help us raise awareness about the check among schools, teachers and parents, and highlight the benefits of using systematic synthetic phonics to give children the skills they will need to succeed.

Of course, it goes without saying that ongoing teacher assessment alongside the check will continue to be hugely important in ensuring that pupils are making progress.

To ensure that teachers have the necessary skills and training, we’ve reviewed the qualified teacher status (QTS) standards under Sally Coates. It is now an explicit requirement that teachers of early reading should demonstrate a clear understanding of the theory and teaching of systematic synthetic phonics. You won’t be able to acquire QTS as a primary teacher unless you can demonstrate a skill in teaching phonics.

As a consequence the Training and Development Agency, together with the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, is working to ensure that all university teacher training faculties are improving the training of teachers in this area.

And so that all schools have access to high-quality phonic resources, we have introduced matched-funding of £3,000 per school. This funding will support schools in choosing and purchasing the appropriate resources for their pupils, together with our recently released catalogue of well-respected phonics products and training, The Importance of Phonics. We are considering running a new procurement process for inclusion in an updated catalogue of resources in Spring 2012, and more information on that will be available in due course.

Finally, Ofsted has published a new inspection framework which draws a closer link between teaching quality and the overall grade schools receive. This new way of inspecting schools will allow Ofsted to spend more time in the classroom and I am very pleased that, for the first time, Ofsted inspectors will listen to pupils reading aloud to check their rate of progress – with a particular focus on weaker readers.

We hope that these measures will help all children to master the essential and life-changing skill of turning words on the page into images, information and ideas in their heads.

In this work I am delighted to have the support of the Reading Reform Foundation, and delighted to be here with you all today. Thank you again for all your hard work and I look forward to working with the RRF over the coming months and years as we take this important task forward.

For children from all backgrounds, being able to read is the vital skill that unlocks all the benefits of education. Together, I hope that we can give more children the key to reading and tackle reading failure.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Schools Minister, on 12 September 2011.

It is a pleasure to be here at the launch of another important report from the Centre for Social Justice. Since the think tank was founded in 2004, by Iain Duncan Smith, it has contributed hugely to the public debate about how to tackle some of Britain’s most intractable social problems. Its seminal report, Breakthrough Britain, highlighted the central role of education in the life chances of us all and the role that poor quality schools have played in “stifling the chances of children in our poorest areas”.

This report looks in more detail at educational exclusion, whether that be the literal exclusion of persistently poorly behaved children from school or the metaphorical educational exclusion of those attending schools that fail to deliver the type of education available to the most advantaged in society. The report makes an important contribution to the education debate and for that we are deeply indebted to the Centre for Social Justice and in particular to Adele Eastman.

I have long taken the view that education is the only route out of poverty and a poor education is, in this modern world, a clear pathway to low income and narrow opportunities.

And the starting point to anyone’s education is learning how to read. This country is one of the world’s highest spenders on education and yet one in five 11 year-olds leaves primary school still struggling with this basic skill. Nine per cent of 11-year-old boys leave primary school with a reading age of seven or younger. And that problem is compounded further when you look just at white boys eligible for free school meals amongst whom 60 per cent aren’t reading properly at the age of 14.

Today’s CSJ report points out that “significant literacy and numeracy problems are found in between 50 and 76 per cent of children who are permanently excluded from school”. It also points to literacy and numeracy problems in 60 per cent of children in special schools for those with behavioural problems and in 50-60 per cent of the prison population. As Adele Eastman correctly concludes:

“Many display challenging behaviour to hide the fact that they cannot read.”

There is a strong body of opinion and evidence that the reason for this country’s problems with reading is the teaching method that was introduced in the 1950s known as Look and Say, that asserted that exposure to and repetition of high frequency words was the easiest way to teach children to read. But evidence from longitudinal studies such as the Clackmannanshire study by Rhona Johnston and Joyce Watson, showed that early systematic synthetic phonics was the most successful method of teaching children to read. Indeed the Clackmannanshire study of 300 pupils over seven years showed that at the end of that seven year period systematic synthetic phonics had given those children an average word reading age of 14 by the time they were 11. The multi-million dollar meta-analysis from the US, the National Reading Panel, came to similar conclusions.

That’s why the Government is giving primary schools matched funding of up to £3,000 to buy phonics materials and training. We’re also introducing a phonic check at the end of year one of primary school to ensure that every child has mastered the basic skill of decoding words. Too many children are slipping through the net, with their struggle with reading allowed to continue without the help they need.

The OECD’s PISA report also shows that Britain ranks 47th out of 65 countries when it comes to reading for pleasure. Four out of 10 teenagers fail to do so in this country compared to just 10 per cent in Kazakhstan, Albania, China and Thailand. So we’re also working on policies to promote greater reading for pleasure.

Today’s CSJ report, interestingly, points to boredom as a factor. “Boredom”, the report says, “has been regularly cited as a factor in challenging behaviour and a reason for disengagement with education”. There are obviously a range of reasons why children might be bored with some lessons. Not being able to read might be a factor or the skills-based approach to history or geography.

A report by the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education points to a significant proportion of pupils not being challenged sufficiently. In that study 8,000 children were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, “lessons are often too difficult for me”. 50 per cent disagreed and 20 per cent strongly disagreed with the statement.

So that’s why we are reviewing the national curriculum, slimming it down so that it concentrates on the core knowledge that pupils need to be taught. We are looking at the curricula of the best performing education systems in the world to ensure that our national curriculum is on a par with the best.

The OECD has also been looking at how some students around the world are able to overcome their socio-economic background when it comes to educational achievement. The report shows that deprived pupils from this country perform significantly less well than deprived pupils in most OECD countries – putting us 39th out of 65 countries.

It is measured in terms of the resilience of students to their social backgrounds. In the UK just a quarter of pupils from poor backgrounds are “resilient” according to the PISA measure compared to three-quarters in Shanghai-China and Hong Kong and nearly half in Singapore. The OECD average is 31 per cent. The OECD concludes that what helps disadvantaged students to overcome their social backgrounds and achieve well in school in spending more time in class, particularly in science.

“Among disadvantaged students, learning time in school is one of the strongest predictors of which students will outperform their peers. In practically all OECD countries … the average resilient student spends more time studying science at school – on average between one and two hours per week – than the average low-achiever.”

That’s why the English-Baccalaureate is such an important concept. Last year only 22 per cent of all students and just 8 per cent of those eligible for FSM, were entered for the E-Bacc subjects at GCSE – English, Maths, at least two of the three sciences or the double award, history or geography and a language. Indications are that GCSE choices for this September show that figure rising to 47 per cent and while we don’t have the breakdown of that figure to show the FSM proportion, it is likely to have increased across the board.

It is the quality of education available to those pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds that is the driving force behind all our education reforms. We want to see the attainment gap between those from wealthier and poorer backgrounds narrowing and ultimately closing.

For example, less than 10 per cent of schools with the highest proportion of pupils eligible for FSM make languages compulsory compared to 50 per cent of schools with the lowest level of pupils eligible for FSM. Pupils on FSM are three times more likely to be persistent absentees and around three times more likely to be excluded than non FSM pupils. So again, we believe the E-Bacc policy will increase opportunity and encouragement to study languages even in areas of the greatest deprivation.

And it’s why we are so determined to drive forward the academies programme – because academies, in some of the most challenging areas of the country – are improving their academic results at twice the pace of non-academy schools. It’s why we believe the Free School policy will make such an impact – with 24 such schools opening this month after just 16 months in office. 50 per cent of those free schools are in the most deprived 30 per cent of local areas.

It is why we have raised the threshold when it comes to persistent absence from schools, so now being away for 15 per cent of the school year rather than 20 per cent is the new definition and ultimately we need to take that down to 10 per cent.

And we also need to do more to make schools safe, happy and calm places where pupils are free to study and able to learn. Persistent low level disruption distracts children, it helps spread poor behaviour and it drives out talented teachers from the profession. The OECD estimates that 30 per cent of effective teaching time is lost because of poor behaviour in schools.

We have to restore the respect for teachers and shift the balance of authority in the classroom away from the child and back to the adult. This is what pupils want as much as teachers and parents. That’s why the Education Bill going through Parliament at the moment will strengthen teachers’ powers to enforce school rules.

It will remove the absurd 24 hours’ notice rule for detentions and it will seek to improve the quality of alternative provision for those pupils who are excluded from school by allowing Pupil Referral Units to have the same autonomy and freedoms as academies. We’re also encouraging new providers to establish alternative provision free schools and we’re piloting a new approach to exclusion in which the school will be responsible for selecting any alternative education and be held accountable for the academic results of those excluded pupils.

Early intervention is also key which is why we’re recruiting an extra 4,200 health visitors to support parents after the birth of their children, extending free childcare for three and four year olds to 15 hours per week from the current 12.5 hours, and introducing 15 hours a week free childcare for the poorest two year olds.

The CSJ and this Government share many objectives – the principal one being to tackle social disadvantage and to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds. Today’s report is a welcome contribution to understanding how we deliver on those vital objectives and I look forward to working with the Centre for Social Justice on what more we can do to ensure that our joint objective becomes a reality.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, on 8 July 2011.

Thank you very much, Ben, and thank you everyone at Stonewall for your kind invitation. It is always a pleasure to work with Stonewall, and I am delighted to be here today.

I’m also very happy to be here with Gok, who is doing excellent work on body image in schools. Although, talking of body image, I have to admit that sharing the stage with a style expert has made me feel slightly self-conscious – I’ve never spent longer picking out a shirt and tie…and yet I still chose this one.

Today’s conference is addressing a hugely important topic. Tackling poor behaviour and bullying are top priorities for this Government, and we are supporting schools to take action against all forms of bullying, particularly prejudice-based bullying and homophobic bullying.

Pupils have the right to come to school and focus on their studies, free from disruption and the fear of bullying. Schools should be happy and safe places for children to learn, and parents expect nothing less from our state education system.

But the 2009/10 Tellus survey found that 28% of children had been bullied in the preceding school year, 21% had been bullied outside school, and 17% had been victims of cyber-bullying.

Overall, just under half (46%) of pupils have experienced bullying at school at some point in their lives – and Stonewall’s research has found that two thirds of lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils have been victims of bullying, one of the highest figures for any particular group of children.

We need to send the message that homophobic bullying, of any kind and of any child, is unacceptable. No child should have to suffer disruption, victimisation or fear as a result of bullying, whether on or off school premises.

But I believe bullying can be tackled. Successful schools have clear policies, developed with pupils and parents, so that pupils understand what is expected of them.

The best schools have gone beyond that to create an ethos of good behaviour where bullying is less likely to occur in the first place…

…Where pupils treat each other, and staff, with respect; where teachers proactively talk to pupils about social and cultural differences, and what behaviour is acceptable; where pupils understand the impact that their actions can have on others.

That culture extends beyond the classroom into the corridors, the canteen, the playground, and beyond the school gates.

The schools and local authorities taking part in Stonewall’s Education Equality Index are making real strides towards this kind of culture, and Stonewall is, I believe, playing an important part in encouraging and promoting best practice.

One issue which I find particularly concerning is the casual use of homophobic language – for example, using the word “gay” in a pejorative sense.

We shouldn’t underestimate the impact of language in our society, and already, Stonewall has found that 98% of young gay pupils hear the word “gay” used as a form of abuse at school.

Even when this language is used pejoratively without thinking and without intended homophobic prejudice, it is still offensive and still unacceptable. We have to show that this use of language is as unacceptable as racist slurs in our schools and in our society.

Teachers have a huge role to play in changing how language is used within a school. There’s a school in the East of England, where behaviour was generally good and homophobia and transphobia weren’t a problem, which identified that the unthinking and derogatory use of words like “gay” was widespread.

They sought specialist support from an outside organisation, Gendered Intelligence, to work with groups of secondary boys on issues of identity and gender. As a result of this work, the school removed the stigma from gender-related terms so that pupils could use language without embarrassment or negative association.

I know that there may be some here may be thinking, “this is all very well, but how is the Government going to make a difference and what is it actually going to do?”.

Well, we know that we can’t just set a target, order an inspection or pass a law and expect all homophobic bullying to disappear. There are some things that can’t be prescribed from the centre. If we could, we or the previous Government would already have done it. Unfortunately, there are no short cuts or silver bullets.

But we will use all the tools at our disposal to send a clear and unequivocal message that homophobic bullying is unacceptable. That means hammering home our message at every opportunity.

Whether in speeches like this to specialist organisations and people working in the front line, in detailed discussions with Parliamentary committees, in wide-ranging speeches to teaching unions or political Party conference set pieces; week in, week out, year in, year out, education ministers in this administration will keep saying that homophobic bullying is not acceptable in our schools.

We are working with schools in a new way, by putting more trust in teaching professionals to find the best solutions for their schools, rather than dictating from the centre what they should do.

That also means a change to the way in which schools work with organisations like Stonewall, EACH and the Anti-Bullying Alliance. This is a real opportunity for specialists in this area to work with schools and give teachers the benefit of their experience.

When it comes to homophobic bullying, for example, the Government is not the expert. Stonewall is, and so are other LGBT organisations working directly with school staff and young people every day.

Our role in Government is to help schools to find and use these expert organisations – not just Stonewall, but also groups like Schools Out, EACH and Gendered Intelligence.

The role of schools is to concentrate on their core business – educating children to become knowledgeable, responsible adults who make a positive contribution to society.

The role of organisations like Stonewall is to help schools, and help us, to create one of the most inclusive education systems in the world.

Schools have a specific legal duty to tackle bullying and we know that schools need clear anti-bullying policies and procedures. Teachers need to feel confident about using the powers available to them to tackle bullying both on and off school premises.

But I think Government does need to be careful in prescribing to schools and local authorities exactly what to include in their anti-bullying policies. Different schools across the country will need different approaches, and teachers should feel empowered to find the right solution for their pupils and their school.

We believe that anti-bullying strategies need to be led and initiated by staff, rather than relying on the courage of individual children to make the terrifying admission that they’re being picked on. By its very nature, bullying often happens in secret, so teachers need to gather intelligence about what is going on in their schools, how and where.

It’s also vital that pupils feel they can report bullying, and the most successful schools are developing creative ways for children to do this.

Bradley Stoke Community School in South Gloucestershire is what we call a lead behaviour school – rated outstanding by Ofsted. Realising that children can be reluctant to report bullying in person (and even a “bullying box” for pupils to drop notes into is too conspicuous), they have developed a new online reporting system. Anonymous messages like “there’s going to be a fight at the shops after school tonight”, or “I’ve seen someone being bullied on the playing fields”, will mean that bullying can be addressed without identifying which child is being victimised and which child has made the report.

While individual schools are developing their own strategies to tackle bullying, there are important changes that we need to make in Government. The last thing we want is for teachers, for example, to waste their valuable time wading through pages of overlapping and repetitive government guidance.

We have already issued new and clearer guidance to help teachers to tackle poor pupil behaviour, cutting more than 600 pages of guidance down to 50. Anti-bullying guidance has been reduced from 481 pages to less than 20, including shorter, sharper advice on schools’ legal obligations and powers to tackle bullying, the principles underpinning the most effective anti-bullying strategies, and further resources for school staff to access specialist information on different types of bullying. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Stonewall for their valuable input and advice during the development of this document.

Our Education Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament, will give heads and teachers a range of powers to put them back in control in tackling bad behaviour and bullying.

These powers are not mandatory, and we do not want to create a punitive culture in schools – but we want teachers to be able to use their judgement, and to have wider powers available when they need them.

To measure the impact of all these changes, we are creating a sharper focus in Ofsted inspections on behaviour and bullying. Ofsted will now look at behaviour as one of only four important core areas, rather than as one of 27 different and equal headings in the inspection framework at the moment.

So we are working more closely with experts, empowering teachers and school staff to take the lead in anti-bullying strategies, and stripping back the cumbersome bureaucracy.

But Ben, if there is any message that leaves this conference today, I hope that it is this.

That while Michael Gove and I are Education Ministers at the Department for Education, the education world should be clear that it is our express intent that the use of the word “gay” as a pejorative adjective is as unacceptable in our schools as any racial slur. And we expect teachers and head teachers to react to it as they would to the use of any of the worst racial slurs.

Thank you very much.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, at the Reform AQA Conference held on 28 June 2011.

Thank you very much, Andrew, and thank you to AQA and Reform for hosting this conference, for your kind invitation to speak today and for your kind words just now. This is the last day of this year’s GCSE examinations, and I’d like to take this opportunity to wish pupils the very best of luck for their final exams, and a well-earned rest after all their hard work.

It is always a pleasure to attend a Reform conference. Last year, I said confidently that I knew Reform would be a friend to the Coalition Government but, like the best of friends, wouldn’t be afraid to tell us when you thought we had got things wrong or could do better.

Well, I think it’s fair to say that, by that measure, you have been a very good friend indeed…

As you say, Andrew, I have been Minister for Schools for just over a year now, and Shadow Minister for Schools for five years before that. During that time I have visited hundreds of schools, observed hundreds of lessons, and listened to hundreds of teachers.

So much of what I’ve seen has been deeply impressive. As we said in our White Paper in November, there is much in the English school system of which we can be proud.

This country has some of the very best schools in the world. Every day, thousands of pupils receive stimulating, engaging and rigorous lessons. We already have thousands of wonderful teachers, and more are joining the profession every year.

But among these examples of excellence, we know that some schools are struggling.

The Secretary of State has established floor standards for both secondary and primary schools. We’ve raised the floor for secondary schools to 35 per cent of pupils achieving five GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and Maths, and at least as many pupils making good progress between KS2 and KS4 as the national average. Next year that floor will rise to 40 per cent. Our aim is to raise the standard to 50 per cent of pupils at each school achieving that floor by the end of the Parliament.

At primary level we have introduced a floor standard for the first time. 60 per cent of pupils achieving Level 4 in English and Maths at Key Stage 2 and at least as many pupils making the expected levels of progress between KS1 and KS2 as the national average, will be the new floor for every primary school in the country.

That means there are 216 secondary schools below the secondary floor standard at the moment, and around 1,400 primary schools below the primary floor – of whom more than 200 have been under the floor for five years or more. Raising standards in these schools is a priority for the Department.

The UK is dropping down the PISA international rankings, falling from fourth to sixteenth in Science; seventh to 25th in literacy; and eighth to 28th in Maths. Our 15-year-olds are two years behind Chinese pupils in Maths, and a year behind their peers in Korea or Finland in reading.

We’re not preparing our school leavers sufficiently well to meet the expectations of employers. The CBI’s annual education and skills survey just last month found that almost half of top employers are forced to invest in remedial training in literacy and numeracy when they hire someone straight out of school or college.

And the attainment gap between rich and poor and between the state and private sectors remains, in our judgement, unacceptably wide.

In 2010, 80.3 per cent of children achieved level 4 in English at the end of primary school – but only 55.6 per cent of white boys on free school meals achieved this level. In other words, only around half of white boys from the poorest backgrounds started secondary school able to read and write well enough to access the secondary curriculum.

This isn’t a one-off occurrence, but a worrying pattern. Last year, 55 per cent of all pupils achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and maths. But the number of children on free school meals who achieved the same level was just 31 per cent.

Whilst GCSE results go up every year, the gap of 28 percentage points between children from the poorest backgrounds and the rest of the population remains stubbornly wide.

Figures released by the OECD this month have shown that poor children in this country are less likely to exceed expectations for educational performance than their deprived peers in most other developed nations. Britain’s record is well below the global average, coming 28th out of 35 leading nations in terms of social mobility on that measure – below countries like Estonia, Latvia, Mexico and Slovenia.

These are the statistics which are driving us to make radical reforms.

Reducing the gap in attainment between pupils from rich and poor backgrounds is a key moral objective of the Coalition Government. Children only get one chance at their education, but we believe these results show that too many of the poorest children are still being let down in English schools.

Evidence from PISA, the OECD, McKinsey and others shows that the strongest education systems around the world – the education systems which are racing ahead of us in the rankings – are those which recruit and develop the best teachers.

In the highest performing education systems around the world, teachers are consistently drawn from the brightest and best graduates . In Finland, for example, teachers are selected from the top 10 per cent of graduates. In South Korea, teachers come from the top 5 per cent.

In these high-performing countries, there are strong systems of professional development, and teachers’ performance is carefully monitored. Teachers learn from successful teachers and schools learn from successful schools.

And because the profession is so highly valued in those countries, it is seen as high status. In Finland, more than a quarter of young people describe teaching as their number one career choice . Yet in this country, only 2 per cent of first class honours graduates from Russell Group universities choose to teach after graduating .

The quality of our teachers matters because international research shows that it is the single most important factor in determining a pupil’s progress. A report from McKinsey in 2007 found that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers” .

Studies in the United States have shown that an individual pupil taught for three consecutive years by a teacher in the top ten per cent of performance can make as much as two years more progress than a pupil taught for the same period by a teacher in the bottom ten per cent of performance.

At secondary level, in particular, research in this country indicates that teachers’ knowledge of their subjects will determine their pupils’ success, especially in the sciences and maths.

For Physics, the subject expertise of the teacher is one of the most powerful predictors of pupil achievement at GCSE and A level. Similarly, in Maths, pupils taught by teachers with a high level of subject knowledge have been proven to achieve better results.

Yet over a quarter of Maths teachers in years 7 to 13 in English schools do not hold a post-A level qualification in a subject relevant to Maths.

40 per cent of teachers of Physics and Chemistry do not hold undergraduate degrees in subjects relevant to Physics and Chemistry. Half of all teachers of French or German do not hold undergraduate degrees in subjects relevant to French or German .

We want to learn from the highest-performing education systems around the world to improve our own performance. To learn from those countries which are now out-performing us. And while they continue to reform and improve, we want to improve more quickly. As President Obama has said: “the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”

All the evidence points in the same direction. As the most recent PISA briefing note on UK schools repeated: “the bottom line is that the quality of a school system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

The Government’s priority is to deliver high quality teaching to all children. This is why we called the White Paper which we published last year, “The Importance of Teaching”, and why we have focused on improving the quality of teaching.

So the question is how: how do we “raise the bar” on teacher quality? We believe it’s a question of rebalancing the system in favour of teachers. We need to improve the support and opportunities available to teachers. And remove the obstacles that are hindering them.

We want to make teaching more attractive to high-quality entrants and help teachers to develop their skills further still.

We have expanded Teach First into the North East, so that it now operates across the whole country. We’ve also taken Teach First into primary schools so that children of all ages can benefit from some truly excellent young teachers.

We’ve launched the Teachers’ Standards Review Group under Sally Coates, the principal of Burlington Danes Academy, to rewrite the QTS and other standards for classroom teachers, focusing them on the key skills and attributes effective teachers need.

But we also want schools to take the lead in creating more opportunities for teachers to learn from their peers in continuing professional development and leadership training.

We are establishing new centres of excellence in teaching practice – called Teaching Schools, modelled on Teaching Hospitals – where both new and experienced teachers can learn and develop their professional skills throughout their careers. Over 300 schools have applied to become Teaching Schools so far and we look forward to designating the first 100 Teaching Schools next month.

Alongside Teaching Schools, yesterday we launched a discussion document about our strategy for reforming initial teacher training to focus on key teaching skills, including managing behaviour and handling pupils’ Special Educational Needs. We want to give schools a stronger influence over the recruitment and selection of trainees and the content of their training; and we want to allow schools to lead their own high quality initial teacher training in partnership with a university.

In particular, we will ensure that teachers are trained to teach reading, to prevent the tragedy of thousands of children leaving primary school every year unable to read properly. Last year, 9 per cent of pupils started secondary school functionally illiterate, unable to read either for school or for pleasure. Over 15,000 children did not reach the lowest marking level in the Key Stage 2 reading test. Over 20,000 children could not even read well enough to take the test.

Without the ability to read what’s on the interactive whiteboard or in their textbook, these children end up falling further behind their classmates, more likely to become disillusioned, disengaged and disruptive.

Research overwhelmingly shows that the most effective method of teaching children to read is systematic synthetic phonics , but at present only half of newly qualified primary teachers rated their training as good or very good in preparing them to teach reading and phonics. We will ensure that teachers are properly trained so they can successfully teach early reading using synthetic phonics, and we’re working very closely with the university education faculties to achieve that.

We are also proposing to offer financial incentives of up to £20,000 to attract more of the best graduates in shortage subjects into teaching; and enable more talented career changers to become teachers.

We will no longer provide Department for Education funding for graduates to enter initial teacher training without at least a 2:2 degree, and we will require trainees to pass tougher literacy and numeracy tests before they start training – without the option of unlimited resits, as they have now.

Finally, we know that teachers want opportunities for further study and continuing professional development to focus on enriching and enhancing their subject knowledge.

We have therefore introduced a new, competitive £2 million Scholarship Scheme. This fund will enable a number of teachers every year to pursue post-graduate qualifications or other rigorous study in their subjects.

Applications are being invited now with the first round of funding to be awarded in December. Funding in the first year will focus on the core subjects of Maths, English and Science, as well as special educational needs, where we also have shortages.

Giving teachers and head teachers their professional autonomy is the driving force behind the acceleration of the Academies programme.

One of our first priorities in office was to pass the Academies Act and one year on, 704 academies are now open – over twice as many as a year ago. By the end of the year, over a third of all secondary schools will be academies . Teachers in these hundreds of new academies enjoy greater professional freedoms, so that they can concentrate on doing their jobs as they know best.

We’re encouraging new free schools to be established in areas of need – set up by groups of teachers, parents or educational foundations. In the latest 2012 round we received 281 applications. We expect between 10 and 20 new free schools to open this September. Of the 32 Free Schools that the Department is currently progressing, 2 are located in the most deprived 10 per cent of Lower Super Output Areas; a third are in the most deprived 20 per cent of such areas; and 59 per cent are in the most deprived 50 per cent of Lower Super Output Areas.

We also want to sweep away the bureaucratic burdens being heaped onto teachers which consume energy and time, and sap morale.

In just one year, under the last Government, the Department produced over 6,000 pages of guidance for schools – more than twice the length of the complete works of Shakespeare but, I would argue, somewhat less inspiring.

Teachers in all types of schools told us that one of the biggest drains on their time was wading through overlapping, over-prescriptive diktats from the centre.

We’ve started to cut this back by scrapping unnecessary bureaucracy and streamlining the duties, guidance and paperwork piled onto schools.

We are also slimming down the Ofsted inspection regime. Rather than examining schools against 27 different headings, it will now focus on the four important core areas: quality of teaching, pupil achievement, leadership and management, and pupil behaviour and safety.

Pupil behaviour affects both the current and the future teaching workforce. A survey of undergraduates found that the greatest deterrent to entering the teaching profession was the fear of not being safe in the classroom , while two-thirds of teachers say that poor pupil behaviour is driving teachers out of the profession .

We have issued new and clearer guidance to help teachers to handle poor pupil behaviour, cutting more than 600 pages of guidance down to just 50.

The Education Bill (currently going through the Lords) will further strengthen teachers’ powers so that they can control classrooms effectively.

Reducing and simplifying guidance will greatly reduce the burdens on teachers’ time, and will enable them to spend more time focusing on actually teaching. Over the next few months we will be publishing shortened guidance in a wide range of areas. In total, departmental guidance will be more than halved.

As well as guidance, we want to remove unnecessary central prescription and allow head teachers and governing bodies of maintained schools more freedom to manage their schools.

The current arrangements for dealing with teacher performance are too complicated and fragmented and more than half of teachers and headteachers surveyed by the Sutton Trust last year agreed or strongly agreed that there was not enough freedom for schools to tackle under-performing teachers.

We are currently consulting on new arrangements which will make it easier for schools to identify under-performance and to tackle it quickly, effectively and fairly.

We’ve launched a review to slim down the National Curriculum. We want to move it to a clear, concise specification of core academic content, for teachers to teach in whatever way seems best to them – again, sweeping away reams of paper and lever arch files that specify the content of lesson plans and how to teach. How teachers teach should be left to their professionalism.

We’re also concerned about the standards in our public examinations, and want to see A levels re-connected with the universities and with the learned societies. We want GCSEs to increase the emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar, and we’ve asked Ofqual to advise us on that.

In the Economist this week, the Bagehot column cites Westminster School where in 1994, 21 per cent of GCSEs taken achieved the top A* grade. By 2004, 59 per cent of the grades at that school were A* and in 2009, 81 per cent.

No one argues that pupil selection or the work ethic at Westminster School has changed since 1994, certainly not to this degree. We need to restore integrity and confidence in our GCSEs.

In conclusion, Andrew, in essence our education policy has 3 overarching goals:

to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds
to ensure our education system competes with the best education jurisdictions in the world
and to trust professionals and raise the esteem of the teaching profession.

It’s an ambitious programme and although self-praise is no praise, I hope you’ll agree that in the first 12 months of this administration we have made an energetic and expeditious start to achieving these goals. Thank you very much.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, on 7 June 2011.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, in Glasgow on 24 April 2011.

Thank you for that introduction.

When Michael Gove asked me what I was doing on Easter Sunday, I thought, how nice, Sunday lunch at the Goves.

After a few seconds, I realised it was because he was asking me to come to Glasgow for the annual conference of the UK’s biggest teaching union.

And I’m delighted that he did.

Having shadowed the Schools Minister post for 5 years in Opposition, I’ve waited a long time to have the opportunity of speaking at the Easter teacher union conferences. But, as they say, good things come to those who wait.

I’ve learnt that it can be quite challenging speaking to large groups of teachers because some of you think that I believe I know how you should do your jobs better, and I know that all of you think you could do my job better.

But I want to begin by putting on record my thanks to the NASUWT – and in particular to Chris Keates.

It’s fair to say that Chris and I don’t always see eye to eye. As she recently remarked, we can at least always leave our meetings by agreeing to differ after having had a good debate. That’s the way it should be.

I have great admiration and respect for the NASUWT – and I enjoy working with Chris – because of the wholehearted way that it campaigns and puts across its case. I never leave a meeting with Chris uncertain of the union’s position.

One of the issues that the NASUWT has campaigned on is better protection for teachers from false and malicious allegations.

I supported the NASUWT’s campaign in Opposition so I’m delighted that, within our first year in government, we are changing the law so that it will be an offence for a newspaper or media outlet to publish the names of any teacher faced by accusations of a criminal nature. And indeed they won’t be able to publish details of a case that could lead a reader to being able to identify the teacher involved.

You campaigned for it – we are delivering it.

It is also vital that pupils, parents and head teachers all fully understand their responsibilities and realise that there will be extremely serious consequences if a false allegation is made.

If there are grounds to believe that a criminal offence like perverting or attempting to pervert the course of justice has been committed, the case should be referred to the police. And in all cases where malicious allegations against a teacher have been made, head teachers have a responsibility to take action, including, when appropriate, permanent exclusion.

For a number of years, the NASUWT has also been a leading voice in drawing attention to the detrimental effects of poor pupil behaviour – both to attainment and to the recruitment and retention of good teachers.

The discipline measures in our Education Bill will ensure that the pendulum, which has swung too far towards pupils in recent years, moves back towards teachers by strengthening the powers that teachers have to maintain order.

Amongst the new measures we are introducing is a specific power to search for and confiscate items like mobile phones and video cameras.

These powers may only be used very rarely, but I would rather teachers are able to decide for themselves whether to use them than have to tolerate pupils using those items to create disruption and, in the worst cases, to bully teachers and other students.

The Government is supporting head teachers and schools, in taking action to ensure strong standards of behaviour prevail in our schools. In turn we expect head teachers to back and support teachers in the decisions they take on a day to day basis in the isolation of the classroom to ensure that pupils can learn in a safe and ordered environment.

And with the backing of head teachers and government, I hope that teachers will be able to instill a culture of good behaviour where pupils behave well not just because they fear sanctions, but because they understand the right way to behave and have due respect for adults and one another.

And let’s not forget the role parents have to play in ensuring their children are well-behaved at school and that they too support the school when teachers take action.

An important campaigning issue for the NASUWT has been the incompatibility of teaching with the views of groups like the BNP.

The Government agrees that the ideology of the BNP cannot co-exist with the education of future generations of young people.

That’s why we want to ensure that head teachers and governing bodies can dismiss any teacher who promotes inappropriate views or behaviour or advocates discrimination in schools. The independent review of teachers’ standards will look at how best to achieve this. And I hope the NASUWT will contribute strongly to that Review.

In the same spirit of partnership and dialogue, I want to say a few words about public spending and pressure on school budgets.

Whichever political party came into office at the election, it would have faced the challenge of tackling the economic consequences of a spiralling budget deficit.

A deficit in which we were spending £156 billion more than we were receiving in income. And an accumulated debt that was costing £120 million in interest each and every day – enough to build 10 new primary schools, every single day. The Office for Budget Responsibility reports that without any further action to tackle the deficit, interest payments would rise to a staggering £67 billion a year by 2014-15 – that’s almost two years’ total spending on schools; three times what we spend on the salaries of every teacher in England, just to service the interest on the debt.

Very difficult decisions have had to be taken across policing, health and other vital public services. In education too, we have had to face some very difficult choices that we would not otherwise have wanted to make in order to help tackle that deficit.

But I am pleased that we have managed to protect – at least in cash per pupil terms – spending on schools. I recognise that even this still means difficult decisions for schools – but in the context of cuts in spending in other Government departments – I am proud of the settlement that Michael Gove negotiated with the Treasury.

I am also pleased that we have been able to honour the third year of the teachers’ pay deal agreed before the election.

I know the pay freeze isn’t welcomed, but it’s a freeze that applies right across the public sector and it doesn’t include increments or pay rises due to promotion. Our priority is to be as fair as possible to all public sector workers and the freeze is helping to maintain the number of teaching posts.

And while we are doing the best we can with the finances we have available, by far our biggest asset is the people working in our schools.

There is nothing more inspirational than being on the receiving end of great teaching.

There was one particular teacher who inspired me. His name was Mr Rogers. We called him Brian. It was after all the mid-70s. And he taught me A-level economics. At that time, he himself had only recently graduated and, despite his own left-of-centre politics, he provided me with a genuine understanding of how economics works and he enthused me so that I became a confirmed economic liberal.

I owe him a huge debt of gratitude – but as I turned 50 recently, it’s horrifying to think that that young teacher I remember must now be contemplating retirement.

A good pension has long been an important part of the overall reward package for teachers. We are committed to ensuring that continues to be the case.

The issue of pensions is extremely important to the profession and I know that the recommendations of Lord Hutton’s Commission have given rise to huge anxieties. I wanted, therefore, to set out where we have got to in those discussions and negotiations and to say something about the long term problems the Government is forced to address.

Over the last 10 years, the private sector has been moving away from defined benefit pensions to the much less generous money purchase schemes. We are not going to go down this route. We are determined – as is Lord Hutton – to keep defined benefit pensions in the public sector and for public service pensions to remain the benchmark standard.

The Government asked Lord Hutton, with his experience as a Cabinet Minister in the last Labour Government and his strong commitment to the public service ethos, to head up a commission to review how we tackle the cost issues arising from increased life expectancy, while maintaining good quality defined benefit public service pensions.

In 2005/06, the cost of paying teachers’ pensions was around £5 billion per year. By 2015/16, the cost is forecast to rise to almost £10 billion.

Lord Hutton’s recommendations have already been the subject of some very constructive discussions between the Government and the TUC. A series of further meetings is planned and I am pleased that Chris is so actively involved to ensure that the specific interests of teachers are properly represented.

What is needed now is more negotiation and discussion so that the specific issues that distinguish the teachers’ pension from other public sector pensions can be drawn out and addressed.

And just to be clear – from the start, the Government has made an absolute and public commitment to protecting accrued rights. All the benefits that have been built up in a teacher’s pension will not be affected by any future reforms.

So, false allegations, pupil indiscipline and bullying, BNP membership, pensions. These are all areas where the NASUWT and government are working together to address the issues that matter to practising teachers.

Because at the end of the day, everything comes back to what teachers do.

I’m sure that many teachers have been watching Jamie’s Dream School on Channel 4 with a combination of intrigue, horror and glee as celebrities have tried their hand at teaching a group of pretty difficult young people.

There are some other valuable insights from watching a renowned historian like David Starkey, at least initially, struggle to convey his passion and expertise to his class.

What the programme demonstrated so vividly is that good teachers not only need good subject knowledge, they also need to be able to communicate that passion, they need an understanding of how young people learn and they need to know their pupils too.

And the most important thing it did was prove why teachers deserve so much thanks and respect for what they do.

But one of my principal concerns with our education system is that teachers haven’t been afforded that trust and respect.

Over the past decade, for every step forward, it has been a case of three steps backwards as yet more targets and responsibilities have been heaped upon teachers.

There has been nothing short of a perpetual revolution inflicted on schools, which we have to bring to an end if we are to raise the professional status of teachers, which this Government is committed to doing.

That is why we are so determined to give teachers more space and flexibility to teach by reducing central prescription and by cutting back on bureaucracy.

We’re shrinking and clarifying guidance.

We’ve scrapped the National Strategies.

Our review of the National Curriculum has the express aim of reducing prescription in primary and secondary schools about how to teach.

We’re reforming Ofsted so it focuses on a school’s core activities and removes the paper trail for inspection – and let me say too that written lesson plans aren’t a requirement for inspection, nor will they be in the future.

The GTCE – by this time next year, it will be gone.

And just as teachers are responsible for delivering high standards in schools, so we too as ministers will no longer hide behind arms-length bodies like the QCDA. Instead, we’re taking responsibility by bringing essential functions back into the Department where we can be held properly accountable for them at a national level.

After years of hard work and training, it is only right that teachers are trusted to get on with their jobs.

We also need to celebrate their achievements by ensuring that excellent teachers can continue to demonstrate their high quality professional skills.

And we need to ensure that teachers can access more and better continuous professional development.

We believe that one of the best ways to improve teaching practice and to allow teachers to become better professionals is by observing other, more experienced teachers.

That is why we intend to reform teacher training and establish new centres of excellence in teaching practice – teaching schools – that will allow new and experienced teachers to learn and develop their professional skills throughout their careers.

But this doesn’t mean the end of university-based initial teacher training. As a nation, we need about 35,000 new teachers each year so there will always be a major role for universities in preparing new teachers.

Throughout teachers’ careers, keeping their knowledge of their subjects up to date is a vital part of being a good teacher.

In the coming months, we intend to introduce a new Scholarship Fund, which will enable a number of teachers every year to study for post-graduate qualifications or other equally rigorous subject-based professional development that will benefit them and their careers.

And alongside the other improvements we are making to strengthen professional development, it will ensure that teachers remain the intellectual guardians of the nation.

I want to end by reflecting on why all of this matters.

Why is it important that we support, protect and develop teachers and why should we enhance, raise and improve the standing of the teaching profession?

The answer is the same reason that teachers get into teaching in the first place – to help all children, irrespective of their background and where they went to school, receive the support they need to succeed.

Despite the hard work of teachers, the least likely to succeed are still those children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Only one in five young people from the poorest families achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths, compared with three-quarters from the richest families.

And of course, it’s not just about qualifications. It’s the end result of unemployment, poor health, generational cycles of poverty and a greater likelihood of getting into trouble that really brings home the importance of a good education.

The same mission to make opportunity more equal drives us in government – and in Michael Gove, we have an Education Secretary whose own upbringing ignited a burning passion to extend better opportunities to the most vulnerable children.

That is why we’re extending free childcare for the most disadvantaged two year olds and focusing Sure Start on the most vulnerable families.

And it’s why we’re spending an additional £2.5 billion on the pupil premium that will provide more resources directly to schools for the education of the poorest pupils.

But the most important thing that we in government can do to close the attainment gap between rich and poor is ensure that there are well-trained, qualified teachers working in the state sector with the freedom and protection they need.

Because it is those same teachers who make the biggest difference of all.

That’s why our White Paper is called The Importance of Teaching.

It is a great privilege for me to be the Minister of State for Schools. I believe it is one of the best jobs in Government because, as someone who went into politics to improve people’s lives, I’m convinced that, whatever their background, nothing is more important than a child’s education.

Whatever our differences on particular policy areas, I know that we all agree on that.

I’ve enjoyed working with Chris over the last 11 months.

And I look forward to a fruitful and constructive dialogue with the NASUWT in the months and years to come.

Thank you.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, in Liverpool on 20 April 2011.

Thank you, Mary for that introduction.

It’s a real pleasure to be here. I’ve waited many years to have the opportunity of speaking at the annual ATL conference. Having shadowed the schools minister post for 5 years in opposition, I don’t think I’ve ever been invited before but, as they say, good things come to those who wait.

As part of my job I regularly meet Mary Bousted and other union leaders. When I saw Mary a few weeks ago I asked her what to expect at this conference.

She was very honest.

She said it would probably be challenging.

She said the delegates would speak their minds.

But she said that was because her members are dedicated professionals who take great pride in what they do.

I see this whenever I visit schools. During my five years as the Shadow Minister for Schools, I visited over 200 schools and, as a Minister, I try to continue to visit as many schools as I can.

One school I visited recently was Kingsford Community School in Newham. It’s a Confucius School, so it teaches Mandarin and I had the chance to sit in on a lesson with a Year 9 class. Given how difficult the language is to learn, I was astonished at how well the pupils could read and speak Mandarin. But after just a few minutes in that classroom, it was apparent why. It was the brilliant teacher who commanded the whole class’s attention superbly and instilled a deep love of the language in the pupils.

This dedication was clear again earlier today in the hour I spent with a group of delegates.

If I said that that we’d agreed on everything, there would probably be a few eyebrows raised – followed by several hundred requests for a list of the people in the room.

Suffice to say, we didn’t agree on everything – but I do believe that we agree on more than we disagree and we all agree on the importance of education to the individual child and to the country as a whole.

I think being Minister of State for Schools is one of the best jobs in Government, because, as someone who went into politics to improve people’s lives, I’m convinced that whatever their background nothing is more important than a child’s education. For children from the poorest backgrounds in particular, education is the only route out of poverty.

One of the overarching objectives of this Government is to close the attainment gap between those from wealthier and poorer backgrounds, an ambition that I know is shared by the ATL.

As the ATL survey released last week showed, nearly 80 per cent of teachers have students living in poverty. Four in 10 say that poverty has increased over the last three years. And 86 per cent say it is having a negative impact because their pupils are coming to school tired, hungry or lacking on confidence.

As so, despite the hard work of teachers, it is still the case that the least likely to succeed are those children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Children from poorer homes start behind their wealthier contemporaries when they arrive at school. At age five, those children living in poverty are around eight months behind their peers.

The achievement gap then becomes entrenched during primary school. At Key Stage 2, 25 per cent of children from poorer backgrounds fail to meet the expected level, compared to just three per cent from more affluent backgrounds.

And it then stubbornly persists through secondary school. Only one in five young people from the poorest families achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths, compared with three-quarters from the richest families.

The odds are even worse for children in care – just one in seven reach that basic benchmark.

And of course, it is not just about qualifications. It’s the prospect of unemployment or a low-paid job, poor health, generational cycles of poverty and a greater likelihood of getting into trouble that really brings home the importance of a good education.

The same mission drives us in government – and in Michael Gove, we have an Education Secretary whose own upbringing ignited a burning passion to extend better opportunities to the most vulnerable children.

That is why we’re spending more in the vital early years and cutting the bureaucracy associated with the EYFS so children get a better start in life.

It’s why we’re spending an additional £2.5 billion on the pupil premium that will mean the poorest pupils get the extra help and support they need.
And we’d like to do more. But whichever political party came into office at the election it would have faced the challenge of tackling the economic consequences of a spiralling budget deficit.

A deficit in which we were spending £156 billion more than we were receiving in income. And an accumulated debt that was costing £120 million in interest each and every day – enough to build 10 new primary schools, every single day. The Office for Budget Responsibility reports that without any further action to tackle the deficit, interest payments would rise to a staggering £67 billion a year by 2014-15 – that’s almost two years’ total spending on schools; twice what we spend on the salaries of every teacher in England, twice what we spend running every state school in the country – just to pay the interest on the debt.

And that £156 billion budget deficit, had we not taken measures to address it, would have resulted in the same financial crises that have devastated Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

And in the Department for Education we have had to make some very difficult decisions that we would not otherwise have wanted to make in order to help tackle that deficit.

But I am pleased that we have managed to protect – at least in cash per pupil terms – spending on schools. I recognise that even this means difficult decisions for schools but in the context of cuts in spending in other Government departments I am proud of the settlement that Michael Gove negotiated with the Treasury.

And I am pleased that we have been able to honour the third year of the teachers’ pay deal agreed before the election.

I know the pay freeze we’ve had to impose beyond that isn’t popular but it’s a freeze that applies right across the public sector and it doesn’t include increments or pay rises due to promotion. Our priority is to be as fair as possible to all public sector workers and the freeze is helping to maintain the number of teaching posts.

At the same time, we are also making the funding system for schools fairer and more transparent. It’s just not right that similar schools in different parts of the country receive, in some cases, vastly different amounts of money.

But while we are doing the best we can with the finances we have available to us, by far our biggest asset is the people working in our schools.

I’m sure that many teachers have been watching Jamie’s Dream School on Channel 4 with a combination of intrigue, horror and glee as celebrities have tried their hand at teaching a group of pretty difficult young people.

There are some other valuable insights from watching a renowned historian like David Starkey, at least initially, struggle to convey his passion and expertise to his class.

What the programme demonstrated so vividly is that good teachers not only need good subject knowledge, they also need to be able to communicate that passion, they need an understanding of how young people learn and they need to know their pupils.

And the most important thing that the programme did was prove why teachers deserve so much thanks and respect for what they do, as well as why teaching should be revered alongside the most esteemed and highly skilled professions.

But, despite this, it’s also true that teachers haven’t been afforded the trust and respect they deserve. And consequently, I believe more needs to be done to raise the professional status of teachers, something this Government is committed to helping to deliver.

Over the past decade, there has been ream after ream of guidance issued to schools and law after law passed about education.

But for every step forward, it has been a case of three steps backwards as yet more targets and responsibilities have been heaped upon teachers.

There has been nothing short of a perpetual revolution inflicted on schools, which we have to bring to an end if teaching is to become the kind of prestigious profession we want it to be.

That is why we are so determined to cut back on all unnecessary burdens and bureaucracy.

We’re removing those onerous duties.

We’ve scrapped the National Strategies.

Our review of the National Curriculum has the express aim of reducing prescription about how to teach.

Through the measures in our Education Bill, we’re refocusing Ofsted and we’re cutting back on back-office functions – including by getting rid of the GTC.

And just as teachers have the responsibility for delivering high standards, so we too as ministers will no longer hide behind arms-length bodies like the QCDA. Instead, we’re taking responsibility by bringing essential functions back into the Department where we can be held properly accountable for the decisions made.

Of course, there are areas where teachers need strong powers.

Tackling bad behaviour is one of the toughest parts of a teacher’s job.
I can also understand why teachers might feel that the system – and Government – hasn’t been on their side in the past.

Our Education Bill will ensure that the pendulum, which has swung too far away from teachers in recent years, moves back in their favour by ensuring teachers have clear powers to discipline pupils and maintain order in the classroom.

Just as importantly, it makes clear that we are backing head teachers and teachers – but that we expect all those in leadership positions to stay in touch with what is going in their classrooms and to back teachers too.

And perhaps most importantly of all, ensuring teachers get proper protection from false and malicious allegations that are not only hugely damaging, but which can blight careers and lives.

We also believe that professionals should have access to more and better continuous professional development.

As Mary often says, teaching is a vocation and teachers need the highest possible skills. I can think of no one better qualified to lead a discussion with Ministers and with professional associations about the role and future of CPD, which is what Michael Gove and I have asked her to do next month.

Teachers are the intellectual guardians of the nation and keeping their knowledge of their subjects up to date – whether it’s theoretical physics or English literature – is a vital part of being a good teacher.

In the White Paper, we made a commitment to introduce a new Scholarship Fund. It hasn’t attracted much attention so far but our intention is that it will enable a number of teachers every year to study for post-graduate qualifications or other equally rigorous subject-based professional development that will benefit them and their careers.

The ATL has long championed teachers improving their professional skills by observing other teachers. We agree that it is one of the best ways to improve teaching practice and to allow teachers to become better professionals.

That is why we intend to reform teacher training so that, alongside thorough initial training, more time is spent in the classroom.

It’s also why new centres of excellence in teaching practice – teaching schools – are being established. Modelled on teaching hospitals, they will allow new and experienced teachers to learn and develop their professional skills throughout their careers.

But this doesn’t mean the end of university initial teacher training – as the country needs about 35,000 new teachers each year there will always be a major role for universities in preparing teachers for the profession.

And in giving schools more autonomy some have claimed that we want to set schools free to go it alone. But by removing needless bureaucracy from schools and by encouraging school-led professional development, we believe schools can strengthen the bonds that exist between them and allow for more opportunities for teachers and schools to collaborate with each other.

So, more freedom, more and better professional development, and more collaboration. All of these are essential to enabling teachers to improve their own effectiveness and, in turn, to improve the effectiveness of their schools.

Because there is nothing more inspirational or memorable than being on the receiving end of great teaching.

I remember one teacher from my own school days, Mr Rogers, or Brian as we called him – it was after all the mid-70s – who taught me A-level economics. He was himself only recently out of university and, despite his own left-of-centre politics, taught me economics so thoroughly that it gave me a genuine understanding of how economics works and turned me into a confirmed economic liberal.

I owe him a huge debt of gratitude, but as I turned 50 recently, it’s horrifying to think that that young teacher must now be contemplating retirement.

The issue of teacher pensions is one that is exercising the minds of teachers, teacher unions and the Government. As well as the huge pressures on public spending as a result of the Budget deficit, there are also long term pressures on all pension funds – both public sector and private – as a result of longer life expectancy and reduced financial returns on pension capital.

We asked Lord Hutton to look at public sector pensions because of his experience as a Cabinet Minister in the last Labour Government and also because of his unparalleled commitment to public service values.

In his report, Lord Hutton underlined the importance of continuing to provide high quality pension schemes to essential public service workers like teachers, whilst ensuring that current and future generations of public servants can also be rewarded for their hard work with a fair but affordable pension.

We have already been clear that we don’t want to see a race to the bottom in pension provision – and that public service pensions should remain a gold standard.

A good pension has long been an important part of the overall reward package that teachers expect.

Our priority is to ensure that continues to be the case. Opt out rates from the Teachers Pension Scheme are extremely low and we want to keep them that way. But we won’t be able to achieve all of this if we ignore the realities of the cost pressures that all pension schemes are facing as life expectancy increases.

The combination of more teacher pensioners and the increase in their life expectancy has meant that the cost of teachers’ pensions increases every year. In 2005/06, the cost of paying teachers’ pensions was around £5 billion. By 2015/16, the cost is forecast to rise to almost £10 billion.

This is why long term reform of public service schemes is needed – and why teachers and other public service scheme members are being asked to pay a higher pension contribution from April 2012.

From the start, the Government has made its commitment to protecting accrued rights absolutely clear. All the benefits that have been built up in a teacher’s pension will not be affected by any reforms recommended by Hutton. This means there is absolutely nothing to be gained by teachers seeking to retire earlier than they have planned.

The Government has accepted Lord Hutton’s recommendations as the basis for discussions with all the trades unions. There have already been some constructive discussions between the TUC and the Government. The aim is to agree a package of principles for pensions reform by the end of June. I fully understand the strength of feeling here in this room – but I strongly urge the ATL to wait for the outcome of those discussions before deciding on whether to take further action.

In preparing for this conference I looked back at the speech that Mary made last year.

There was one phrase that really stuck in my mind. And it was this:

“It’s the teachers, stupid.”

I’m not sure who the “stupid” was directed at. I can only guess……

But she was right.

We have to attach the highest possible importance to teachers and the teaching profession.

That’s why our White Paper is called The Importance of Teaching.

Its aim is to help teachers to be better professionals by reducing bureaucracy, improving professional development and supporting teachers and head teachers to maintain high standards of behaviour.

And the reason why is because that is the only way that we can close the attainment gap between those from poorer and wealthier backgrounds.

Whatever our differences on particular policy areas, I know that we are united in that aim.

I’ve enjoyed working with Mary and with Martin over the last 11 months – and I look forward to a fruitful and constructive dialogue with the ATL in the months and years ahead.

Thank you.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Education Minister, in Birmingham on 25 November 2010.

Thank you, Nick, and thank you for allowing me to speak today rather than yesterday, when we were launching our White Paper. The least I could do in return for causing you the inconvenience of re-jigging your conference agenda was to get up at the crack of dawn, catch the early train up from London and be here by 9.15am!

But I am delighted to be here again and to have this opportunity straight away to discuss the contents of the White Paper and the detail of the policy direction behind it.

The White Paper itself is entitled ‘The Importance of Teaching’, reflecting the earnestness of our desire to raise the status of the teaching profession and to return teaching to the centre of what happens in our schools.

It’s also called ‘The Importance of Teaching’ because many of its policies have been influenced by leading teachers and headteachers, as well as organisations such as the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.

In my speech at this conference last year, I talked about how we were listening to what schools had told us about the need to cut bureaucracy, to increase autonomy and to improve behaviour.

And most importantly that if we were elected, our approach to education policy would be based not on ideology but on the things that the evidence tells us works and the things that headteachers tell us work.

The case for change

As the introduction to the White Paper says: ‘All the evidence from different education systems around the world shows that the most important factor in determining how well children do is the quality of teachers and teaching.’

The latest McKinsey report, just published, entitled Capturing the Leadership Premium, about how the world’s top school systems are building leadership capacity, cites a number of studies from North America, one of which found that:

… nearly 60% of a school’s impact on student achievement is attributable to principal and teacher effectiveness. These are the most important in-school factors driving school success, with principals accounting for 25% and teachers 33% of a school’s total impact on achievement. (p7)

Also in the McKinsey report, an analysis of Ofsted inspection reports concludes that:

For every 100 schools that have good leadership and management, 93 will have good standards of student achievement. For every 100 schools that do not have good leadership and management, only one will have good standards of achievement.

This is why, when you read the White Paper, you see that its constant theme is the central importance, above all else, of the profession, and what we can do to ensure every child has access to the best possible teaching.

You will already have seen – and I hope been part of – our drive to increase the autonomy of schools through expanding the Academies programme and giving teachers and headteachers more control over their own destiny. Alongside teacher quality, research from the OECD cites autonomy, combined with rigorous and objective external accountability, alongside teacher quality, as the other essential characteristics of the highest-performing education jurisdictions.

This is just one of the series of reforms that we’ve begun to take forward over the past six months to bear down on unnecessary burdens, to grant schools greater freedoms and to extend teachers’ powers to enforce discipline.

And we’ve done so because our education system, as a whole, is still some way short of achieving its potential.

Still a long way to go

We have some of the best schools in the world, but the truth is that we also have too many that are still struggling.

We have some of the best headteachers and teachers working in our schools, but too often they say they’re constrained by needless bureaucracy, central targets and guidance, and an overly prescriptive curriculum that dictates, for example, that lessons should be in three parts, with a beginning, middle and end.

More young people now stay on in education – but some learn skills and earn qualifications that aren’t as highly valued by employers and universities as we would wish.

And we simply aren’t doing enough to ensure there really is, as the title of this conference suggests, excellence for all, by supporting the education of the most disadvantaged and helping them to overcome life’s lottery.

This is really brought home by the OECD international table of performance, in which we’ve fallen in recent years from fourth to 14th in science, seventh to 17th in literacy, eighth to 24th in maths.

Studies undertaken by Unicef and the OECD tell us that we have one of the most unequal education systems in the world, coming 55th out of 57 countries for educational equity and with one of the biggest gulfs between independent and state schools of any developed nation.

Michael Gove used to cite the unacceptable fact that of 80,000 GCSE students qualifying for free school meals, just 45 went on to Oxford and Cambridge a few years later. He’s had to stop using that figure because the latest year’s figure is that just 40 go on to Oxbridge – a drop of 12.5 per cent.

That’s why the challenge facing us is to reform the whole schools system.

That is the challenge that our White Paper will allow us to meet.

And we want to do so by making the catalysts that have driven improvement in the country’s best state schools available to all schools.

Greater freedom

Over the past decade, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust has played an important role in raising standards, promoting greater innovation and improving the life chances of hundreds of thousands of pupils.

The near universal network of specialist schools attests to what can be achieved when schools are allowed to innovate and have the freedom to develop their own distinct character and ethos.

And it has also demonstrated that if you trust headteachers and the profession, the benefits accrue faster.

It is because specialism is now so firmly rooted in our schools that we’ve decided that it’s the right time to give schools greater freedom to make use of the opportunities offered by specialism and the associated funding.

And just so that we’re all clear, we’ve not removed the funding – all of that money will continue to go to schools – but we have removed all the strings attached to it so that schools have the freedom to spend it on, and buy in, the services they want and need without central prescription.

And while this will naturally also remove the need for schools to re-designate, I hope that the SSAT, and in particular the National Head Teacher Steering Group, will continue to provide a loud and influential voice on behalf of all of its membership.

Alongside greater control over budgets, we’ve scrapped the burdensome self-evaluation forms for school inspections and the overly bureaucratic Financial Management Standard in Schools.

We are also committed to reducing central bureaucracy still further, cutting down on unnecessary data collection burdens and reforming Ofsted so that inspection is more proportionate with fewer inspection criteria: instead of the 17 we have now, just four – leadership, teaching, attainment and behaviour.

And we will slim down the National Curriculum. At present the National Curriculum contains too much that is not essential, too much that is unclear and too much prescription about how to teach.

We need a new approach to the National Curriculum so that, to quote from the White Paper, it:

…specifies a tighter, more rigorous model of the knowledge which every child should be expected to master in core subjects at every key stage. (p 10)

It is our view that in a school system that moves towards a greater degree of autonomy, the National Curriculum will increasingly become a benchmark against which schools can be judged rather than ‘a prescriptive straitjacket’ into which education is squeezed.

What underlies an effective education is the ability to read. Despite the hard work of teachers there are still too many children who fail to master this basic skill to a level that gives them the key to secondary education.

Fifteen per cent of seven-year-olds don’t reach the expected level in reading at Key Stage 1. One in five 11-year-olds leave primary school still struggling with English. And I’ve been to too many secondary schools where the head tells me that a significant minority of their intake has a reading age below nine or eight or sometimes six or seven.

This is unacceptable, which is why we are introducing a new light-touch, phonics-based reading test for six-year-olds, to ensure all children are on track with literacy at an early age.

We need to identify early on those children who are struggling so they don’t slip through the net and so that schools can give those children the support and help they need. We want all children to acquire that basic decoding skill early on in primary school so they can spend the remaining five or six years reading to learn, developing their vocabulary and comprehension and a love of books. It can’t be right for children to spend seven years of primary education continually struggling with this basic educational tool.

And because we understand why schools might have felt that the system – and Government – hasn’t been on their side in the past, there are also new measures in the White Paper to improve the exclusions process, further strengthening schools’ powers to ensure heads have the confidence they need to use them – including by ensuring the anonymity of teachers facing allegations from pupils or their parents.

We believe these measures will help all schools to innovate and allow headteachers and teachers to focus on teaching – but the schools that will reap the greatest benefits from our attack on bureaucracy will be the academies.

Greater autonomy

Of course, academies are already free from central control and aren’t constrained by choice of specialism or the need to re-designate.

They are the schools in which headteachers have been given the greatest autonomy to shape their own curriculum, to insist on tougher discipline, to set their own staff pay and conditions, and to extend school terms and school hours.

And they’re also the schools that have improved the fastest. Last year the rate of improvement in academies was twice that of other schools, and some individual academies, such as Burlington Danes Academy in central London, have delivered incredible improvements of between 15 and 25 percentage points in just one year.

In this year’s Ofsted annual report, published earlier this week, 26 per cent of academies were rated outstanding compared to 13 per cent of secondary schools nationally.

Back in 2005, the former Prime Minister promised that all schools would be able to enjoy academy freedoms – but many of these freedoms were curtailed. An artificial ceiling of 400 academies was placed on the programme and primaries were refused entry.

The Academies Act removed both of these barriers to the rapid expansion of the programme by giving all schools the chance to take on academy status – starting with those rated outstanding by Ofsted.

Since the start of this school year, 144 academies have opened and a further 70 are due to open in the coming months. There are now 347 open academies, with more opening every week.

Just under half of these replaced failing schools and we will continue to challenge schools that are underperforming with converting to academy status under a strong sponsor as one of the options available to deliver improvement.

Last week we began the next phase of the expansion of the Academies programme, which will mean that schools that need to improve can join academy trusts where they will be supported by some of our best leaders in education.

We expect all of the outstanding schools that have converted so far to use their new-found powers and freedom to support weaker schools, and we’ve now extended the invitation to convert to academy status to schools judged by Ofsted as ‘good with outstanding features’.

So the result of the Academies Act will be greater autonomy within a culture of collaboration, where the bonds between schools are strengthened and there is a further step-change in system-led leadership.

A culture of collaboration

In the late 1980s and 1990s, grant-maintained schools were allowed to opt out of local government control. Many enjoyed great success in doing so – but the mistake made then was that people felt that their autonomy created a ‘them and us’ culture.

But in my experience, the very best school leaders are characterised by their refusal to put a cap on aspiration for children and, consequently, tend to be those who are working in more than one school.

This might mean that they’re an executive head in a federation where they lead two or more schools.

It might now mean they’re an academy principal in an outstanding school working with another school to help them improve.

Or it might mean they’re an NLE or LLE. I’m a huge admirer of all those heads who are NLEs or LLEs. They’re demonstrating that their aspirations have no bounds and that they want to go the extra mile to improve standards – not just for the children in their own schools, but in other schools too.

That’s why we want to double the number of NLEs and will designate 1000 over the next four years.

We all have a duty to ensure there are minimum standards of performance through the school system. It isn’t acceptable to any of us that we have so many schools in which two-thirds of children fail to secure five good GCSEs.

Minimum standards have certainly risen in recent years, in line with the increased aspirations of parents and communities and thanks to the hard work of school leaders.

But given the quickening pace of school improvement across the globe, it’s essential that we demonstrate that we are raising the bar for all schools. And that is why our White Paper sets new floor standards that will apply from January next year once we’ve verified final examination data from last summer. For secondary schools, this will be at least 35 per cent of pupils with five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and Maths – and for primary schools, 60 per cent of the cohort achieving level 4 in English and Maths combined and where progress is below the expected level. Crucially, both of these new floor standards will involve a progression measure as well as the raw attainment figure.

In doing that, we also want to avoid the errors of the past when some schools felt unfairly labelled as failing by Government.

That is why on top of the pupil premium, which will tackle disadvantage at root by providing additional money to schools to extend opportunity to the poorest pupils, we’ve created a new education endowment fund worth £110 million to drive improvement in the most underperforming schools.

But the biggest shift in our White Paper is in how we support teachers.

It is widely recognised around the world that nothing matters more than teaching and that the most important thing we can do is recruit the best, train them well and help them and the teachers we already have to develop throughout their professional careers.

That’s why we’re expanding Teach First and introducing other new high-quality routes into teaching.

Teachers also want the capacity to be able to learn from other teachers if they are to grow as professionals, which is why we are removing the rules preventing classroom observation and why we intend to designate the best schools led by the best heads as teaching schools.

In the NHS, teaching hospitals have become centres of excellence in their local areas by training current and future generations of doctors and nurses while also providing excellent medical care.

We want teachers to have the same opportunities so teaching schools will work with other schools and with universities to deliver excellent initial teacher training, ongoing professional development and leadership development, while also providing an excellent education to pupils.

And as well as ensuring that high-quality training is available, teaching schools will become engines of school improvement themselves because a vital part of their role will be to identify the best leaders and deploy them in a way that will allow them to support those schools that need to improve.

But most importantly, teaching schools recognise that the biggest asset in schools is its people.

They have to be our focus if we’re to achieve excellence for all.

Excellence for all is a fitting title for this conference because it is, I know, what all professionals strive to achieve every single day.

It is what we are striving for too.

And with our White Paper, the reforms that I’ve spoken about today and the continued leadership of the SSAT and its members, it is finally a realistic ambition.

Thank you very much.

The speech made by Nick Gibb, the then Minister of State for Schools, on 11 January 2011.

The timing of the conference could not be better, with the white paper published at the end of November and the Education Bill to be published shortly.

And the theme ‘Our World, Our Future’ could not be more appropriate.

The context in which this conference is held is dominated by global factors – the growing dominance of the emerging economies of China and India; the global economic crisis; and the indebtedness of nations that during the boom years overspent and are now on the brink of financial collapse, as the global capital markets no longer regard them or sovereign debt as risk-free investments.

Greece and Ireland are still teetering as they struggle with their structural deficits. And it is to avoid that fate that the Coalition Government has had to take some very difficult decisions.

It’s not comfortable being a minister in a spending department in the midst of these problems, having to take decisions to reduce and refocus programmes on those in most need – programmes such as the Education Maintenance Allowance. And I know it isn’t comfortable either for those involved in local government, facing similar pressures.

But it would be far worse to see our country’s economy plunge into crisis, as would happen if we failed to tackle our massive structural deficit. This year alone will see £156 billion added to our national debt, with an interest charge of £120 million every single day – enough to build 10 new primary schools.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility reports that without any further action to tackle the deficit, interest payments would rise to a staggering £67 billion a year by 2014-15. That’s almost two years’ total spending on schools: twice what we spend on the salaries of every teacher in England, twice what we spend running every state school in the country – just to pay the interest on the debt.

And that all assumes, of course, that the capital markets would be willing to lend us these huge sums, which the experience of Greece and Ireland demonstrates that they would not. The longer the economy languishes in crisis, the later the economic recovery and the jobs that are so desperately needed, particularly for young people – the group who bear the brunt of a stagnant economy as companies freeze recruitment.

But the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury do understand the importance of education to that recovery and to the long-term prosperity of this country.

Education is a key priority for the Government which is why the Department for Education secured one of the best settlements in Whitehall.

Spending on schools will remain at flat cash per pupil over the course of the spending review period, which means there will be extra cash for demographic increases in the school population.

And on top of this will be the Pupil Premium, extra money for each pupil who qualifies for free school meals. This will amount to £430 per pupil in this coming financial year but will rise significantly over the next four years, to some £2.5 billion a year by 2014-15.

But although we have secured the best possible settlement it still requires us to find cuts in the overall departmental budget of 3.4 per cent by 2014-15.

Our approach has been to ensure we protect school budgets, while devolving as much autonomy as we can to headteachers by collapsing numerous funding streams into the main schools grant. We’re also giving local government far greater autonomy – streamlining 45 local government grants into just four funding streams.

To ensure schools do receive this cash, we have had to take some difficult decisions over centralised programmes and ask ourselves this question: given that we have secured the very best possible settlement we could hope to have achieved from the Treasury and given the budget deficit, do we continue with a particular central programme and slice off a little from the amount we want to give to schools? Or do we end the programme and ensure that schools have that cash?

Each programme has its supporters. Most of these programmes achieve things. Some – but not all – are good value for money.

The problem is that the money isn’t there.

Greater autonomy

Our approach to spending – devolving as much control over limited resources as possible to the front line, to headteachers in particular – is the same approach that we take to education policy generally.

Research from the OECD cites autonomy, combined with rigorous and objective external accountability, as the essential characteristics of the highest-performing education jurisdictions in the world.

That’s the reasoning behind our drive to increase the autonomy of schools through expanding the academies programme and giving teachers and headteachers more control over their own destiny.

We have always supported Labour’s Academy programme and pay tribute to the energy and commitment of Lord Adonis as Schools Minister in developing this policy and transforming so many schools.

In the seven months since we came into office we’ve doubled the number of academies and hundreds more schools have applied to convert later in 2011.

And we will support teachers, charities, parent groups and education foundations who have the vision and drive to open Free Schools where there is parental demand, particularly in areas of deprivation where poor provision is especially acute.

And I hope that we can persuade some of the trade unions that Free Schools offer a real opportunity for teachers to put their professional expertise into practice. We would be delighted to see one or more of the teaching unions setting up their own Free Schools. They would certainly have our active support if they sought to do so.

The case for change

At the end of November we published our White Paper, entitled The Importance of Teaching, reflecting the earnestness of our desire to raise the status of the teaching profession and to return teaching to the centre of what happens in our schools.

The theme of this conference, ‘Our World, Our Future’ is the right theme for an education conference, reflecting, as it does, the way today’s education system will determine the society we will have in 20 or 30 years’ time. It is a cliche to say that we live in a global economy. But like most cliches it reveals a truth, that young people will now be competing for jobs and income with the best-educated people not just in this country but from around the world.

Which is why we need an education system that is on a par with the best in the world. And although we have some of the best schools in the world, the truth is that we also have too many that are still struggling.

The attainment gap between rich and poor remains enormous – a gap we are determined to narrow and ultimately close; there are still too many weak schools in deprived areas; and teaching is rated by Ofsted as no better than satisfactory in half our schools.

In 2010, 54.8 per cent achieved 5 or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths. But of those eligible for free school meals just 30.9 per cent achieved this standard. And the gap between these two figures has remained stubbornly constant in recent years.

In the OECD international performance table we’ve fallen from 4th in the year 2000 to 16th in science, from 7th to 25th in literacy, and from 8th to 28th in maths. The survey also showed that 15-year-olds in Shanghai, China, are two years ahead of our children in maths, and that 15-year-olds in Finland are two years ahead in literacy.

Studies undertaken by Unicef and the OECD tell us that we have one of the most unequal education systems in the world, coming 55th out of 57 countries for educational equity and with one of the biggest gulfs between independent and state schools of any developed nation.

And so our White Paper reform programme, and the Education Bill implementing that programme, is geared around the same simple truth that all leading systems share – that high-quality teaching is the single biggest determinant of a pupil’s achievement.

The latest McKinsey report, Capturing the Leadership Premium about how the world’s top school systems are building leadership capacity, cites a number of studies from North America, one of which found that:

… nearly 60 per cent of a school’s impact on student achievement is attributable to principal and teacher effectiveness. These are the most important in-school factors driving school success, with principals accounting for 25 per cent and teachers 33 per cent of a school’s total impact on achievement.

Also in the McKinsey report, there’s an analysis of Ofsted inspection reports which concludes that:

For every 100 schools that have good leadership and management, 93 will have good standards of student achievement. For every 100 schools that do not have good leadership and management, only one will have good standards of achievement.

This is why the constant theme of the White Paper is the central importance, above all else, of the teaching profession and what we can do to ensure every child has access to the best possible teaching.

Every single one of our reforms should be judged on how it equips teachers to do their job better – expanding the academy programme; encouraging new providers to galvanize and innovate; rigorous recruitment and training; strong discipline powers; a slimmed-down curriculum; robust assessment and inspection; and the Pupil Premium.

Greater freedom

We have some of the best headteachers and teachers working in our schools. But too often they say they’re constrained by needless bureaucracy, central targets and guidance, and an overly prescriptive curriculum that dictates, for example, that lessons should be in three parts, with a beginning, middle and end.

We will slim down the National Curriculum. At present, the National Curriculum contains too much that is not essential, too much that is unclear and too much prescription about how to teach. Instead, it needs to be a tighter, more rigorous model of the knowledge which every child should be expected to master in core subjects at each key stage, to be a benchmark against which schools can be judged rather than a prescriptive straitjacket into which education is squeezed.

Alongside greater control over budgets, we’ve scrapped the burdensome Self Evaluation Forms for school inspections and the overly bureaucratic Financial Management Standard in Schools.

We are also committed to reducing central bureaucracy still further, cutting down on unnecessary data collection burdens and reforming Ofsted so that inspection is more proportionate, with fewer inspection criteria: instead of the 17 we will have just four – leadership, teaching, achievement and behaviour.

Reading

What underlies an effective education is the ability to read.

Despite the hard work of teachers there are still too many children who fail to master this basic skill to a level that gives them the key to secondary education.

15 per cent of seven-year-olds don’t reach the expected level in reading at Key Stage 1. One in five 11-year-olds leave primary school still struggling with English.

And I’ve been to too many secondary schools where heads tell me that a significant minority of their intake has a reading age below nine or eight or sometimes six or seven.

We need to identify early on those children who are struggling so they don’t slip through the net and so that schools can give those children the support and help they need.

That is why we are introducing a new light-touch, phonics-based reading check for six-year-olds to ensure all children are on track with literacy at an early age.

School improvement

And because we understand why schools might have felt that the system – and Government – hasn’t been on their side in the past, there are also new measures in the White Paper to improve the exclusions process; ensuring that violent children cannot be reinstated against the wishes of the school, while improving alternative provision – and measures to protect teachers from malicious allegations by pupils and parents; including anonymity until charged with an offence.

We want to move away from the top-down approach to education policy. That’s why we’re now giving schools the primary responsibility for their own improvement.

This is not cutting schools adrift to let them sink or swim, as some claim. We will still set high minimum expectations for schools. For secondary schools, this means, at least 35 per cent of pupils with 5 or more GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths. And for primary schools, 60 per cent of the cohort achieving level 4 in English and maths combined and where progress is below the expected level. Crucially, both of these new floor standards will involve a progression measure as well as the raw attainment figure.

But the onus should be on heads themselves to drive up standards, working together and drawing on the own wealth of expertise, experience, leadership and capacity within the system – without needing central government to mandate it through continual targets, ring-fenced grants and field forces.

A culture of collaboration

We believe that collaboration between schools and within the profession is a better and more effective means of school improvement than the top-down approach.

The very best school leaders are characterised by their refusal to put a cap on aspiration for children and, consequently, tend to be those who are working in more than one school.

This might mean that they’re an executive head in a federation where they lead two or more schools.

It might now mean they’re an academy principal in an outstanding school working with another school to help them improve.

Or it might mean they’re a national or local leader of education. I’m a huge admirer of all those heads who are NLEs or LLEs. They’re demonstrating that they want to go the extra mile to improve standards; not just for the children in their own schools, but in other schools too.

That’s why we want to double the number of NLEs and will designate 1,000 over the next four years.

We’re building a network of teaching schools.

And we’re putting in place incentives for schools to work together – with a new £110 million Education Endowment Fund to encourage innovative approaches and inviting applications from schools and local authorities.

We will also establish a new collaboration incentive worth £35 million a year to help schools support weaker schools.

Role of local government

I’ve been asked many times about the role of local authorities in a more autonomous school system, particularly as the number of academies continues to grow.

We are clear that local authorities have a crucial role to play – as champions of children and parents, to ensure the school system works for every family; using their democratic mandate to challenge underperformance; and to ensure fair access to all schools for every child through the admissions system.

The Secretary of State has established a ministerial advisory group with representatives from local government and education to work through what this means in practice – that local authorities would take action if there are concerns about the performance of any school in the area, using their intervention powers to act early to secure improvement in their own maintained schools.

And where a local authority has concerns about an academy, it will be able to ask Ofsted to inspect the school and will, as now, be able to pursue those concerns with the Secretary of State.

Conclusion

There is a lot more I could talk about.

But what I hope I have been able to demonstrate today is the seriousness with which we take education reform.

And that at the core of that reform is the objective of closing the attainment gap between those from the wealthiest and poorest backgrounds.

Deprivation should not mean destiny and it is ending that link that lies behind the urgency of our reforms.